Playback Scrubbing Request

• May 18, 2025 - 22:49

In Finale it is possible to press ctrl + Spacebar and a little ear pops up and you can just hear wherever your cursor is and you can move it around and you don’t have to click a new section and play it. If you press ctrl + shift + spacebar you can hear whatever specific line (single instrument) is playing or the notes. It would be awesome to have that.

Thank you!!


Comments

If you have one staff selected and you click Play, then only that staff plays ... and it plays from the selection point. You can also multi-select adjacent staves and only those instruments play.

In reply to by TheHutch

What you described is in essence similar with one distinct change. Scrubbing allows for spot checking at your own pace outside of the tempo.

The Finale Blog offers this scenario as an example: Here’s the scenario: Upon entering a bunch of notes, you’ve played back your score to aurally proof your work. Something isn’t quite right in one section, but you’re not certain which part contains the error. You could start muting and soloing parts, pressing play and stop again and again, or use this option.

Hold down two keys (on Windows press Ctrl+Spacebar, on Mac press Option+Spacebar) while you pass the mouse over the area of music you want to scrutinize. As you do you will hear the sonorities involved, with full instrumentation. This action lets you hear only the area you want to hear when you want to hear it. Cool, but you need to solo specific staves, right?

To hear a single staff, add the Shift key to the other two keys. Now you will hear just one staff at a time as you pass your mouse over your music.

Sometimes having multiple approaches to the same issue is helpful. Personally using Finale is a headache enough, the scrubbing helps, and I think it would in MuseScore also.

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